Earthbound
by hikachu
Summary: Conrad doesn't know how to smile. Implied one-sided!ConYuu & ConWolf.


**EARTHBOUND**

Conrad is tired. There's very little meaning behind his smiles apart from the soldier's willpower that keeps him from giving up: he knows what's the right thing to do and has a strong grip over his emotions—something which has often saved his life in battle and that now is slowly, but surely, helping Conrad to lose himself.

He feels like the ancient, dark rocks standing proudly above the sea, almost touching the sky and yet forever at the mercy of furious waves and callous winds. He feels mostly useless, unable to move, like it's not his right to say things, to want things, to wish for anything: he's a child, he's a boy, and he glances at his mother's soft expression, catching the sadness and the uncertainty nobody else but her sons can see, and Conrad decides: it's okay, if he cannot move because he's just a rock, because rocks fade away very slowly and are very strong—he will be his mother's shield, he decides, and is almost proud of himself.

Conrad is _there_ but he doesn't know who or why he is, and when Celi decides to name one of her flowers after him, he's grateful, yes, but he also thinks (bitterly—without acknowledging it, but, there is definitely bitterness; not towards his mother but his lack of certainties and solid basis) that she couldn't have chosen a more fitting name._ Conrad stands upon the Earth_. And that's all that can be said about him, neither demon nor human, uncertain and unable to step forward and decide.

The first time Conrad feels his body truly moving (because he really, really wants it to) is at the birth of his little brother: Wolfram is soft sunshine that stares at him with impossibly big eyes before catching one of his fingers and giggling as if he couldn't have caught a better, more precious prey than Conrad. And when Wolfram grows up he's like a sunflower: eternally following Conrad's every move, always screaming: "Look at me, look at me!" even when he's silent. His resemblance with their mother is striking, but his green eyes don't hold any of that melancholy that Conrad naturally associates with Celi's bright smiles: Wolfram is too little to wish for anything and know the pain of longing, but he can already _believe_: that he can be happy—that they can all be: mother and big brother Gwendal and little big brother Conrad and Wolfram himself; they can be happy if they're together. Conrad cannot bring himself to believe as well, but for the first time in his life he wants to hope: he reaches out to touch Wolfram and dances around him to protect, not because he can, but because he wants to.

Then Conrad breaks Wolfram without meaning to, before he himself could learn how to smile without it being awkward and, not quite forced, but empty. Susanna Julia is always smiling: her expression his soft and gentle, very different from his mother's dazzling one or Wolfram's; Wolfram, who now smiles out of pride or self-satisfaction but never because he's happy. His faith his lost somewhere now, and every time Conrad sees him grinning from afar, he can feel the curve of his own lips becoming uglier and uglier and uglier.

Nowadays Wolfram is the sun: warm and lovely but too distant, too different. Susanna Julia is the moon: colder but not heartless, closer to the Earth upon which he stands. Conrad could try and reach out again, and there would be no risks of getting scorched, and in the end he still doesn't, but when Susanna Julia dies, indeed, he can't compare her loss to sand slipping through your fingers for he has never once tried to grasp her, her essence and her quiet mirth. They see him broken and angry, can hear him screaming in spite of his obstinate silence, and they ask: "Did you love her?", and he stops for a moment before he can shake his head, because in truth he'd like to say yes and no at the same time. Conrad loved her deeply and dearly, in the same way you can love a benevolent goddess or the star which will finally guide you home, and for this very reason he cannot call this feeling 'love': he has never allowed himself to long for her in any way—her smile and her warmth were for everyone and her soul was for that unfathomable greater good which gave birth to Adelbert's rage and the despair of the both of them.

Conrad learns to move on slowly; years go by and he learns to smile again from a child laughing in a crib: he's different from Wolfram, with dark hair and dark eyes and – Conrad will find out in fifteen years – he's _hope_ rather than hopeful. Yuuri is destined to reawaken faith in tired hearts and give them a second chance at finding happiness. Conrad watches him waver and smile and cry and shout and, finally, starts to wants things for himself.

Yuuri is truly the sun but, differently from Wolfram, he's too gentle to know pride or burn and push away anyone. He's kind and selfless like Susanna Julia, but he's not a cold moon that inspires reverence. He laughs openly like he did that day at the park and offers his hand to whoever will need it. Yuuri is the warmth that this world wrecked by wars and prejudices had forgotten and searched for, blindly, for millennia.

And Conrad's smile is still empty, still secretly tired, and he still doesn't dare voicing his wishes nor acting upon them: Yuuri is what everyone else lacked and wanted, and (once again) it's not his right to steal him away; at this point, he's probably too old to learn how to be selfish and how to live properly, anyway.

These days, though, Wolfram is smiling like he used to; his eyes shine as he runs after Yuuri and he's joyful and full of hope even when he's shouting angrily, and this fact is enough to make Conrad's heart a little bit faster. He watches his brother and his king sharing the same horse and almost falling down because they're too busy bickering to pay attention to the road, and then Conrad who doesn't know how to smile, laughs sincerely.


End file.
